The Kennedy Center: ARTSEDGE — the National Arts and Education Network

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Exploring A Streetcar Named Desire
Students study setting, plot, and character development in Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire and discuss its impact on American theater.

Grades 3-4 Lesson: Exploring Weather Conditions Through Painting
Students will learn about how weather influences culture, daily life, and mood by examining paintings depicting different types of weather.

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Fancy Fencing
Stage-fighting, and especially sword-fighting, is important to the plot of many Shakespearean plays. In theatre, fights are based on precise choreography.

Grade 5 Lesson: Finding Your Own Frog Prince
Students will use a traditional tale, “The Frog Prince,” and Jon Scieszka’s variation of it, The Frog Prince Continued, to create improvised scenes and then a book for a mini-musical.

Grades 6-8 Lesson: First Rhythmic Composition
This lesson introduces students to rhythm concepts, including the names and symbols associated with music notation

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Five Artists of the Mexican Revolution
Much of Mexican art at the beginning of the 20th century was influenced by or created in response to historical events.

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Form and Theme in the Traditional Mexican Corrido
Students will learn about the traditional Mexican musical form of corridos, which dates back to the 1800s and continues to be very popular

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Fractured Families in American Drama
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Long Day's Journey into Night, explore the tension, tragedy, heartbreak, and love within flawed and fractured families.

Grades 6-8 Lesson: From Greece to Main Street
Students will learn defining elements of classical Greek architecture by comparing the Lincoln Memorial with the Parthenon in Athens, Greece

Grades 3-4 Lesson: Get Dramatic: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
In this lesson students will explore the concepts behind the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle slogan through theater

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Get Inside a Cell!
In this lesson, students will gain an understanding of the components of an animal cell.

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Giving Voice to History
Students will understand a somber period in American history. During World War II, the U.S. government ordered more than 120,000 Japanese Americans to detainment camps.

Grade 5 Lesson: Greek Mythology: Cultures and Art
Gain insight into Greek culture and make aesthetic, perceptual, creative, and intellectual connections to contemporary culture by creating and painting mythological characters

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Guantanamera: A Poem and a Song
Students will listen to "Guantanamera," a Cuban folk song made famous by Pete Seeger with lyrics from a poem by Jose Marti.

Grade 5 Lesson: Gyotaku Japanese Fish Printing
By acquiring knowledge of historical and cultural qualities unique to this particular art form, students can gain an understanding of how Gyotaku reflects a part of Japanese history

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Haiku: Learning and Sharing
In this two-day lesson, students will look beyond the basics of haiku poetry (three lines, 5-7-5 syllable format) and focus on the content of the haiku.

Grades 3-4 Lesson: Harriet Tubman: Dancing on the Freedom Trail
In this lesson, students are introduced to the emotional struggles Tubman faced as she helped slaves escape and travel north along the Underground Railroad.

Grades 3-4 Lesson: Harriet Tubman: Illustrating History
Using collage, students create a scene from the life of Harriet Tubman

Grades 3-4 Lesson: Harriet Tubman: An Informative and Impressionistic Look
Examine the life of Harriet Tubman through a comparison of informative resources and impressionistic art

Grades 3-4 Lesson: Harriet Tubman: Secret Messages Shared through Song
In this lesson, students are introduced to the African-American spiritual and its use of a secret language to share information within the slave community.

Grade 5 Lesson: Haunting Music
Learn about orchestral “program music” inspired by the spooky and bizarre

Grades 9-12 Lesson: Historic Heroes
The class will break into groups and write a working definition of a hero which they will present to the class.

Grades 6-8 Lesson: How Do Cells Reproduce?
This activity illustrates the process of mitosis, or cell division, in yeast. Cells carry on the many functions needed to sustain life. The most important is the ability to reproduce.

Grades 6-8 Lesson: How Many Cells Are Born in a Day?
In this lesson, students use calculation to predict the number of cells that result from a series of cell divisions. They then graph the results to represent their findings.

Grades 6-8 Lesson: Identity Boxes
Artists Lucas Samaras and Joseph Cornell both explored the idea of personal identity through their art. Both created small "portrait" boxes that reveal as well as conceal identity